From _Stirling_ I rode to Saint _Johnstone_,[19] a fine town it is, but it is much decayed, by reason of the want of his Majesty's yearly coming to lodge there. There I lodged one night at an inn, the goodman of the house his name being _Patrick Pitcairne_, where my entertainment was with good cheer, good lodging, all too good to a bad weary guest. Mine host told me that the Earl of _Mar_, and Sir _William Murray_ of _Abercairney_ were gone to the great hunting to the _Brae_ of _Mar_[20]; but if I made haste I might perhaps find them at a town called _Brekin_, or _Brechin_, two and thirty miles from Saint _Johnstone_ whereupon I took a guide to _Brechin_ the next day, but before I came, my lord was gone from thence four days. Then I took another guide, which brought me such strange ways over mountains and rocks, that I think my horse never went the like; and I am sure I never saw any ways that might fellow them I did go through a country called _Glen Esk_, where passing by the side of a hill, so steep as the ridge of a house, where the way was rocky, and not above a yard broad in some places, so fearful and horrid it was to look down into the bottom, for if either horse or man had slipped, he had fallen without recovery a good mile downright; but I thank God, at night I came to a lodging in the Laird of _Edzell's_ land, where I lay at an Irish house, the folks not being able to speak scarce any English, but I supped and went to bed, where I had not laid long, but I was enforced to rise, I was so stung with Irish musquitoes, a creature that hath six legs, and lives like a monster altogether upon man's flesh, they do inhabit and breed most in sluttish houses, and this house was none of the cleanest, the beast is much like a louse in _England_, both in shape and nature; in a word, they were to me the _A._ and the _Z._ the prologue and the epilogue, the first and the last that I had in all my travels from _Edinburgh_; and had not this Highland Irish house helped me at a pinch, I should have sworn that all _Scotland_ had not been so kind as to have bestowed a louse upon me: but with a shift that I had, I shifted off my cannibals, and was never more troubled with them. The next day I travelled over an exceeding high mountain, called mount _Skene_, where I found the valley very warm before I went up it; but when I came to the top of it, my teeth began to dance in my head with cold, like Virginal's jacks;[21] and withal, a most familiar mist embraced me round, that I could not see thrice my length any way: withal, it yielded so friendly a dew, that did moisten through all my clothes: where the old Proverb of a Scottish mist was verified, in wetting me to the skin. Up and down, I think this hill is six miles, the way so uneven, stony, and full of bogs, quagmires, and long heath, that a dog with three legs will out-run a horse with four; for do what we could, we were four hours before we could pass it.